What is Your Worth?

 It has only been a moment since I last wrote here. I want my writing to become a contribution of some sort, but inspiration and spirit are required to contribute with awareness. 

I have struggled with feeling worthless, and it occurs to me that a person's worth is often weighted by the productive contributions that person makes to society; how much concrete "work" that person performs to accomplish tasks that benefit others. Most view this dynamic in concrete terms, i.e., producing a product that can be marketed and sold.

Throughout my tragically long life, I have enjoyed many small moments where I labored: jobs in construction, yard work, cooking, journalism, multimedia, etc., yet what I value most has little to do with the work I've done. In fact, the work I've done or haven't done only seems to burden my conscience of late. It often seems meaningless, and sometimes it weighs on my conscience so heavily that I yearn for an end to my corporeal existence. The rapids of time seem only to exacerbate this issue. Each passing day is another opportunity to miss the mark, increasing the wages of sin.

Yet there is a glimmer of hope: perhaps the one talent I possess can become a gift with real dividends, and so I will share with you this one thought: I love you unconditionally. You are worthy of this gift.

The Chosen One

He speaks to common man
A voice they understand;
They, too, have fallen from grace
Find solace in their place

Lost souls who will forget
The reason left unmet,
Struggle for good and evil
The price of our regret

Come back alive

Not sure where to start here, but this phrase has been echoing in my mind for a long time, sometimes a soft, muffled echo like rain hitting the outside of your window and sometimes like the striking peal of a pinball getting batted about by the bumpers and levers. 

When I first left home at 18, this was my mother's wish. Off to bootcamp I went, and I made it through and came back alive. Later, as a deputy sheriff, this wish was spoken by several people in my life. My family, even my ex-wife, wanted me to come back alive when I was deployed to Iraq in 2004. This is a common wish for many people in the world: when we are separated from the ones we love, we wish them the best and they do the same for us, with some variation of this request to come back alive.

I have managed to pull it off many times. Come back from some disaster, come back from some horrific human tragedy, come back from a dark place so easy to get lost in. And I've been rattling around in one of these places lately, trying to figure out how to go forward, how to get home. 

Newsflash: You can come back to a home every day and hug your wife and children and still not be aware that you are alive, or that you are at risk of dying in one way or another. Lately my past and present have been colliding and I've been trying to plan a way back to the present. To be.

I went to a counselor today. I haven't been able to manage it on my own. My wife is a wonderful person, my children are wonderful, and my coworkers are wonderful in various ways, but they weren't up to the task of pulling me up, perhaps because they don't know how far I've fallen. 

Well, I think my wife is beginning to understand: a few days ago, she said somethiing to me intended to get my attention and something inside me snapped. I began to wail like a wild animal; I had to get away. I ran to my bedroom and shut the door and continued to unravel. When she came to comfort me, I recoiled, jumped into my closet and closed the door so she couldn't see me like this, but she persisted and we ended up in a hug.

I knew then that I wasn't going to pull it off this time. I wasn't going to make it back alive. At least not by myself. The stresses of work and home and everything in between have finally begun to get the better of me. I had to get help. Today was the first day: I went to see a counselor. I will meet her again next week to work out a strategy, a way forward.

So many people I've loved have given in to life's challenges. I made it through many years so far, and I'm not ready to give up. I just need a little help. I needed a life preserver thrown down so that, at least for now, I can keep swimming until I reach shore and know I am finally on solid ground.

Hello, I am Louis. I am not an alcoholic like my father. But I need help.

Cat's out of the bag

I let someone close to me know about this blog. It was intended to be anonymous. I hope I don't get my eyes clawed out: It's harder to write when you're seeing through red.

Paranoia

I ran a traffic light this evening. Well, I entered the intersection when the light was yellow, but the light changed to red while I was in the intersection. There was a camera, and I thought of the time I had to pay a hefty fine for running a red light. A camera had taken a photograph of my car. Will I get another ticket in the mail?

I work for Uncle Sam. He’s been getting quite a lot of attention from Russia, China, some entities in the Middle East... and others. I have been worried about hacking: The Office of Personnel Management sent me notice that my information was “breached.” I’ve been looking at different types of protection for my home systems. While searching for security products from my work computer, I clicked on an article about a device that could hack a system just by being plugged into it. As soon as I clicked it, the page immediately closed and so did my browser. There are threats inside and outside the federal government; I am not one of them.

Each day, I think about my role here. I am a spirit living a human experience. My core is Love. It is the most important lesson for each of us. Will I be killed? Will my family be harmed? Will my country be sabotaged? I hope not. But what is more important than security to save us from fear?

There is no “Us and Them;” there is only “We.” I don’t want to know your secrets. I want to know your heart. Can we do more than get along?

I love God above all else; after that I love you as if you are kin. My human side is afraid; my spirit sings to you.

Hafiz: For A While

We have all come to the right place.
We all sit in God’s classroom.
Now,
The only thing left for us to do, my dear,
Is to stop
Throwing spitballs for a while.

I am still breathing

Might seem like a while since my last post. At my age, 7 years is but a breath. Change is the only constant. Well, change and Love. I think it is time to start writing more, if only for a breath of a moment in this very long life.

Moving On

Commuting is where I left off almost two years ago now. Where does the time go? It passes like the water rushing past me as I walk along the oceanfront.

I hated commuting. I hated commuting so much that I finally left my job. Well, there was more to the decision than just hating the commute, but imagine spending four hours of each day commuting to and from work.

So much has happened in the short time since my last post. These events are hard to quantify because they are all important in some way, yet they are all just another thread in the fabric of my reality continuum.

Some highlights: I got married… twice… to the same woman. We adopted a new baby girl. I found out I had cancer, then I elected to have radical surgery to remove it. The surgery was on February 14 (Valentine’s Day) of 2007. My son graduated from college. I quit my job. I spent three seasons staying at home to take care of our children while my wife worked to renovate her properties. My dad died. I have been looking for a job. I have been cancer-free for more than a year now. Now I need more money (I haven’t been working since September). I have been exercising vigorously as often as I can at our local gym.

Life is good.

Commuting

I absolutely hate commuting. At the moment of this writing, I am sitting in a subway car destined for the last stop on the line. My laptop is not being entirely cooperative, and it seems there are a lot of St. Patrick’s day revelers or something… maybe just party-goers. I don’t mind the people, really, but I have been commuting for so long now that I hardly remember what it was like to have a normal life. And now things are worse than ever with regard for the commute.

It takes me almost two hours and sometimes more than two hours to get to work now. Every day, in the past, it’s been a bus ride or a long drive or a subway ride or some combination of the three. You might think that this would be time I could use to get things done (like, say, write blog entries). Yeah, sure I can use the time for odd little busy work, but in general the commute is too long, too boring and takes a huge bite out of what could be a more normal existence. My commute right now: I leave home in the morning, before 10 a.m., and I don’t get home until at least 12 hours later. By that time, the gym is closed and I rarely have energy to do too much. Even if I did, I could start a project and then get focused on it for a couple of hours. Then, after eating dinner, it might be 12:30 or 1 a.m. Then up at 8 a.m. to get ready for the next day.

Such has been my life for more than a decade. Caught up in circumstances I have little control over, losing time and then finding I have little time or energy to devote to other activities I would choose. Yes, I want leisure time. My ideal situation right now would be to work close to home… or even telecommute… and then have time to go to the gym or on a nice run or bike ride, followed by some quality family time. It seems I am spending so much time in travel and at work that I can’t find much time for even the critical tasks like finalizing my divorce or finishing my tax return.

So I’m looking for even more change in my life; a complete life makeover. A new job when my job was the last vestige of my former life. I would like to stay in the employ of Uncle Sam because my benefits, 401K and retirement would all transfer nicely, but at this point I’m considering all options.

The trip is not over; I haven’t reached my destination yet. I’m just going to keep at it until things fall into place. Hopefully the wait won’t kill me.